[MUD-Dev] Focus on Hocus Pocus

[Sean Kelly]

---- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Chatterley" <mpchatty at hotmail.com>

> I'm planning out a system whereby the Mud implementation holds the
> *components* of magical spells - effects, types of spell,
> elements, and so forth.

> A player wizard would take a bunch of reagents, some time, a bit
> of thought and imagination, and create a sequence of events and
> effects, which cumulate to the spell that he wants.

> He can then write this spell down (either as a one-shot scroll, or
> in a spellbook). In short, all spells in the game would be created
> by players, using provided tools - some wizards would be the
> 'programmers' of magic. In fact, programming is probably quite a
> good analogy. The tool I intend to provide will most likely use a
> simple form of pseudocode.

This sounds like an evolution of the basic system in the Ultima
games.  While the Ultimas did have a preset list of spells, if I
remember right, in some of the games you did have to figure them
out.  There were reagents and power words and different reagents and
words had different effects.  You then combined them to produce the
effect you wanted.  For example: Flam = flame, Vas = great, In =
call/cause (i think), so I want to make a fireball spell and I
figure out what power words describe it, combine them to form "In
Vas Flam" (or was it "In Flam Grav?" -- been too long).  And
reagents served a similar purpose.

Asheron's Call took a similar approach, but their system fell apart
with the increasing power levels by the introduction of essentially
random tapers that reduced spell research to a matter of economics
and brute-force experimentation.  The system itself was novel, it
just didn't retain its novelty as it progressed to higher spell
levels.  (Can't fault Turbine, from what I understand the magic
system was almost dropped entirely at one point during development,
if AC'd had a larger budget...).  One other thing they added was a
somatic component.  In beta, the monsters actually said the words
and made the gestures to cast the spells, and the bulk of original
discovery about the system came from watching and listening to the
monsters cast spells.  For some reason, some of these features were
removed when the game went into production.

> On the more technical side, the portions of spells which can be
> played with are along the lines of: Range (touch, short, medium,
> long), Area (Caster, one target, targets within area, area
> itself), Base effect (damage, augment, afflict - where these
> encompass confusion, healing, harming, blinding, boosting
> stats/skills, shielding, and so forth), Element (fire, water,
> earth, air, energy) .. yadda.

This sounds very much like the Asheron's Call system, with the
addition of a bunch of enchantment/illusion effects (which are
difficult to implement, but I like -- I'm personally opposed to stat
buffs/debuffs).  Someone (Merry) wrote a program for AC called
Split-pea that basically automates the entire reasearch process for
spellcasting within the game.  You might want to look at it as it
breaks down all the reagents and combinations and is a excellent and
comprehensive intro into the concept behind their magic system.
It's also a testament to just how much players can learn about a
black box, given enough tenacity.

Personally, I love the idea of spell research, and your proposed
system, but AC has proven that obscurity is not sufficient to
control the learning/experimentation process.  Plan that within a
month people will have web pages of formulas and new players will be
referring to those instead of researching and creating spells on
their own.  If this concerns you, I'd suggest trying to find ways to
tie the system to in-game accomplishments, like questing for new
reagents or to learn words from dusty books lost in the days of
yore.  Anarchy Online purports to do something like this for nano
formulas, though I don't know many of the details.


Sean

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